All the good links: Come watch me live stream on Twitch! Almost every night 9pm CST www.twitch.tv/metatrongemini Join this channel to get access to more old school Metatron videos the algorithm wouldn't prioritize! ruclips.net/channel/UCIjGKyrdT4Gja0VLO40RlOwjoin I have a Patreon page with extra content! www.patreon.com/themetatron My second channel about languages www.youtube.com/@metatronacademy My third channel about gaming www.youtube.com/@TheProtectorate-yq7vi My Twitter/X x.com/pureMetatron Link to the article davidvidecette.com/blog/2022/1/11/is-the-worlds-most-famous-piece-of-armour-a-fake All the rest of the links to further your study www.google.com/search?sca_esv=8ae233b4ae284247&sxsrf=ADLYWIKyVMJYgScbJ3dM2iU1KSo_k04wOw:1737501853385&q=Napoleonic+cannon+ball+injury+on+human+bodies+pdf&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjF55Hm-oeLAxVLMdAFHSkpFhsQBSgAegQIDBAB&biw=2048&bih=1017&dpr=1.88 www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/arrqmj/what_did_cannonball_impacts_actually_look_like_in/?rdt=47494 www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/amputations-and-civil-war www.jstor.org/stable/45114512 muttermuseum.org/static/ad4d1c83d23bf66cf008a69f6bf49da9/civilwar_lp4_fnl.pdf civilwartalk.com/threads/effects-of-cannon-ball-injury.209488/ www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1879981718300391 www.npshistory.com/publications/battlefield/hwp/18th-century-artillery-manual-2016.pdf
Thanks for sharing, as always. Excellent community, noble ones. It is difficult to comprehend the difficulties endured by the soldiers in question, so may we benefit from their exemplary noble efforts.
5:30 I don't remember the book, but I'm pretty sure there is a Dragonlance book that had a goblin do this exact thing. Though I read it a long time ago, it may not have been Dragonlance, but it was fantasy.
Have you ever seen an unopened aluminum can shot with a bullet? Small hole on entrance and totally blown out in the back. Its not about the size of the bullet or fragments of hard material being dragged out the back. it is the kinetic energy of the impact pressurizing the contents and essentially exploding the container. Not to dissimilar to armor with a body inside it (which is mostly liquid).
"All the evidence suggests...” says the journalist who has zero evidence, just his own opinion. He's such a hypocrite. The bit that really annoyed me is his baseless assertion that a cannon ball wouldn't leave a bigger exit wound. Trash-tier reporting, regardless of the armour's authenticity.
@kramelbbiw ngl at first i thought you were calling metatron a journalist but then i got later in the video and uuhh...yeah. vidicette or whatever his name is talking out his booty cheeks
"Why was the hole in the backface at odds with the hole in the front of the breastplate" Every gun enthusiast over the age of 12 is screaming at their screen right now. The fact that this Vidcette thinks fragmenting bullets is the primary mechanism of action that causes a larger exit wound shows he's never treated M855 wounds or ever examined military wounds. Hydrostatic shock and material-inertia spreading out from the source of impact play a much higher role. Further more, on a convex object most of the force is compressive, and upon an exit of the concave inner side, it would be mechanical sheer force. Completely different plastic-deformation and material properties. Career men who do one thing for 30 years need to be very careful when trying to examine larger topics. All they know is that one thing, and in everything else, they tend to be very uneducated.
I was thinking the same. I have don some pinking. a 6.5*55 swedish blows a alminium can almost apart. even if I use a FMJ. Not that the bullite exploded on inpact. It didn´t even care about the can.
He says it's a 12cm hole in the front, the Blomfeld is a 9 pounch and only 10cm, a 12 pound is just over 11cm, so one of two things spring to mind, perhaps a captured french gun, or there was a 12 pound british gun there (they were used by the British though some sources say they were used at waterloo and simply called a 'Blomfeld' like the 9 pound version, others just use the term 'Blomfeld' to denote the new carrieage design) or possibly, the charge had bee turned and he got hit by his own cannons fleeing... But i was confused by the 'ex scotland yard' chap.
@@jjww30 deformation has nothing to do with it, it’s the fact it is passing through material( human body) that doesn’t want to compress easily, so it forces it out the path of least resistance, creating an irregular exit shape. Like shooting a tin can that’s empty vs one that is full, the full can will explode, the empty one will not explode.
also if you somehow you manage to survive your pretty much dying rather quick from infection. I mean that wound would have been infected damn quickly and you would likely qhave a nasty case of gangrene setting in. this is pre antibiotics.
The cavity wound would destroy heart, lungs and all major arteries, so you don't have to worry about infection. If there were someone in this plate, he would be 100% dead in seconds.
@@poil8351True but Metrons point was we don't know fir sure if he died instantly or 5 min later without sources. You can survive initial injuries that are obsoletely devastating for short periods and sometimes even days after. I would say it is likely the wound would have resulted in a quick death and probably instant, but he could have lingered for several minutes before dying.
It's too bad the investigative author hasn't heard of hydrostatic shock or watched a Taufledermaus video of them shooting 12 ga shotgun slugs thru ballistics gel.
A significant point that seems to have been ignored is that the rear hole is larger due to the metal being fractured and bent outwards. Put those folds back together and it will lose a significant part of its size. Similarly the front hole is larger than whatever hit it as it's not just a cleanly blown hole, it's metal bent inwards pulling on metal around it. As a practical example take a sheet of metal, put a nail on it and strike it with a hammer - the displacement will be much larger than the size of the nail itself. If someone was wearing this plate the injury would not be survivable. One lung would be instantly gone, the shockwave could have easily pulverized his other lung, hearth, spine, any other organ in the vicinity. If he died from that right that instant, or if he bled out over the next few seconds / minutes seems rather irrelevant.
The second paragraph of your comment is spot on. I cannot believe that Metatron would make such a foolish comment. A bloke that was hit in the chest by a small cannonball would have been killed immediately as if he had been hit in the head! What difference does it make if he died immediately or two hours later?
@@TheEudaemonicPlague -The heart is basically right in the middle between the lungs - and connected with thick arteries and veins. If there is say a rapid overpressure - like if a large object just crashed through parts of the lung - then it will affect the heart too.- Edit: Forget all that... i missed the joke.
@@ABaumstumpf He's making a joke about heart (organ) vs hearth (fireplace). The original poster surely means heart but for some reason added the extra h at the end.
People do survive stuff that is unbelievable. I was ran over by a garbage truck in Vancouver, Washington in 2013. I did not die in an actual warzone but some muppet almost kills me in a crosswalk.. I am sure there is a joke somewhere here. I now have about six titanium pins in my body.
Well, there is that saying that soldiers have difficulty adapting to civilian life. 😅 Seriously, though, I imagine you'd simply not expect mortal danger to come from such a source.
according to wikipedia, a woman was cut in half by a train and she was conscious and talkative inside the ambulance and died shortly after on the surgical bed.
I can understand being skeptical of unsourced statements, but I doubt anyone is going to survive a canonball going through their chest. The temporary cavity alone would probably destroy their spine. As for the hole in the back, it doesn't matter how soft skin is when it has been instantly accelerated to a few hundred miles an hour and forced through a metal plate that was already weakened by a canonball going through it. As for the case of him being alive on a marriage certificate, I could see a few things happening that could cause that, but most of them boil down to the fact that war is chaotic. Stuff is forgotten, stuff is destroyed, stuff is known only by people who died in battle, there are many ways that information can be lost that would clear up a mystery quickly. As for a lack of rust, that could also be a function of the metal. I don't know the composition of the metal here, but some types of bronze can be very resistant to rust. There was a bronze sword recovered recently (within the last 20 years) that was recovered from an archeological dig in China that was in near perfect condition.
as someone who hunts their own food i can assure you the pressure wave sucking in air post projectile will LIQUIFY the internal organs. If he was impaled on a tree that size then yes he may have gotten unlucky and died after a week of sepsis
Not just the spine essentially every organ in the vicinity (basically all vital organs) it's like being shot in the brain, it's possible to survive but 99% of people won't.
@@robertgross1655 In keeping with the video, I am considering the word rust to refer to any slow forming metal oxide, in this case copper oxide assuming that my limited understanding of metallurgy holds. It may not be a scientific or technical definition, but it is commonly used enough to be understood. Most people understand what you mean when you say the statue of liberty has rusted.
Not a Cuirassiers but a Carabiniers cuirass. All artillery is moved by animals mostly horses. Horse Artillery normally accompanies Cavalry and Foot Artillery normally stays on one spot but is brought there by horses..
that's correct! Maybe the smallest regimental guns could be transported for short distances by men but not on the march. The greatest difference between horse and foot artillery is that the cannoniers in the first accompanied the piece on horseback while in the latter the cannoniers were sitting on the artillery chests, on caissons, or on "sausages" dirrectly over the carriage.
Cuirassiers vs Carabiniers - That's possibly important when the author's challenge regarding corrosion is important. The Carabiniers' cuirasses were of iron plated with brass - so won't corrode in the same way.
Apparently Scotland Yard is not very well versed in ballistic exit wounds, a larger exit wound I would dare say is expected...especially with something as blunt as a cannon ball. I believe the concave nature of the back plate being punctured from the inside side also contributes to the size of the opening compared to the front plate being punctured on the convex side.
@@michelguevara151generally, not. However, there are significant amounts of shootings in various places. London, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham and others. It's not unheard of but still, somewhat, rare. Some by farmers, others by gangs.
25:38 the entrence hole has only the cannon ball entering while the exit hole has the cannon ball and internal matter exiting. More material being pushed in high pressure leads to bigger hole. It's not that complicated
Most people forget that bullets remove material, internally, as they transverse. Hitting that front plate would have pushed that sharp metal all the way out the rear, taking bones and organs as well. Terminal ballistics isn't for the common folk
Agreed, even though it’s softer than the metal, it’s still a good sized mass being pushed with tremendous force by the ball and would definitely make a larger exit.
@@guillaume4519 the phrasing sounded either ignorant or intentionally false (he could be lying for money or publicity). Maybe it was just poorly phrased, but I'm doubtful of it.
@@guillaume4519 I would also think that if the plate was used for testing, it would have been empty inside except perhaps for a wooden cross to hold it upright. In that case the exit should have been very similar to the entrance. I’d be surprised to hear of them packing it with melons or an animal carcass for testing.
I was at an NSSA shoot once where a cannon crew depressed the barrel to far and the shot rolled forward a bit before the charge went of so the ball hit the ground about 12 ft in front of the muzzle and then rolled at what looked like the speed of a bowling ball for well over a hundred yards then up a 45 degree or so slope that was around 30 ft high and off into the woods where it knocked over a goodly sized tree. The amount of KE in it was truly amazing. A person trying to stop it wasn't going to have much luck.
Vidicette argues that bones are softer than metal. I have heard stories of soft objects being forced through hard ones in hurricanes, but he has more experience with ballistics than I do. Also the whole in the front is reportedly too big to begin with. Other commenters make good points as well. I look forward to a follow up video. Someone call Tod Cuttler!
For a particularly interesting story of battlefield wounds from cannonball wounds in the period, I recommend reading about one incident during the second day of Napoleon's first defeat as Emperor -- at Aspern-Essling in May 1809. Marshal Jean Lannes, the Duke of Montebello, was discussing the impasse of the day's fighting against the Austrians with his mentor and friend, General Charles Pouzet. Suddenly, a six-pound cannonball decapitated Pouzet as he was speaking. Marshal Lannes, deeply shaken by the loss of his friend, walked over to a ditch and sat down cross-legged to mourn in silence. Freakishly, a second cannonball quickly followed, skidded across the ground, ricocheting and smashing into his legs. The wound was initially not life threatening, but it rendered him unable to walk. Yet after an amputation, one of his legs became infected, and he died eight days later in agony. The Emperor was known to have said, "I lost the most distinguished general in my army, my companion in arms for sixteen years, and ... my best friend."
You are a very knowledgeable fellow and, perhaps, a "Napomaniac" like myself! 😂 If I remember correctly the whole incident is described in Marbot´s Memoirs.
"Rifle Regiment" is not a correct translation of "Carabiniers." A carbine is a shorter version of a conventionally long-barrelled gun, which could be either a smoothbore musket, or a rifle. A standard French musket was completely unwieldy to use from horseback and the Napoleonic French army didn't have rifles, as far as I know, except when employing German conscripts/mercenaries. A French Carabinier in 1815 didn't even have a carbine. He was a cuirassier in a slightly more flamboyant uniform, armed with a sabre and, I suppose, two pistols. The detective is also wrong about the nature of artillery in Wellington's 1815 army. While it is true that the largest calibre British field guns (as opposed to howitzers) were nine-pounders, the Austrian Netherlands, i.e. modern-day Belgium, and the Netherlands had both been annexed by Napoleon, forced to fight for him and used, therefore, French equipment, which probably included twelve-pounder cannons at Waterloo, where they were allies of Britain.
Yeah, it's like people translating napoleonic era fusilier to riflemen while it's actually means musketeers, in english language the word 'rifle' is the successor of the 'musket' for a long firearm because rifling in the late 19th century are common.
Usually the Napoleonic artillery preferred to skip the shot across the battlefield, but that day the battlefield was quite muddy and the elevation was higher than normal. According to battlefield reports his unit crested a ridge line when the artillery fired. This might be a part of why the cannon ball hit higher than usual.
A possible reason for the hole in back being so large is the hydraulic effect of the cannon ball passing through. It pushes quite a bit of material and fluids ahead of it. So a smaller entry hole than exit.
In my experience with ballistics, anything carrying enough kinetic energy to punch a clean hole through metal like that, would literally disintegrate anything on the inside. You would literally find an arm 30 meters away hanging from a tree. just my opinion.
Nonsense. The man's measuring the hole across, where the metal has been distorted, rather than where the imprint of the ball is clearest. Also note, being British, he's apparently unaware that it was an Allied army that fought at Waterloo, not a British army. Were the Dutch artillery batteries limited to 9-pounders?
The British can't help themselves. "The barbary of the defeat suffered by Napoleon's army at Waterloo at the hands of the British" (21:37). The British take credit for a victory won by a vast European coalition. Out of 120,000 Allied soldiers facing Napoleon's army at Waterloo (70,000 British, Dutch and Germans under Wellington and 50,000 Prussians under Blücher), the British contingent amounted to only 31,000 soldiers (including the 6,000 soldiers of the King's German Legion), i.e. a quarter of the total (the British nevertheless provided a great deal of financial resources and military equipment to the coalition army). It is not for nothing that the name of Waterloo itself (chosen by Wellington) did not meet with unanimous approval: the Germans (who provided by far the most troops) preferred "Battle of the Belle-Alliance", the French "Battle of Mont-Saint-Jean". What's more, the Battle of Waterloo was not a one-sided massacre, as author David Videcette suggests. The French fought bravely and stubbornly, inflicting 24,000 casualties on the allies (including 17,000 on Wellington's troops), at the cost of 26-27,000 casualties in their own ranks.
For those curious about the effects of the hit on the human body, the Slo Mo Guys have a video with a 'cannonball' about half the size and a tenth of the mass: Cannon Ball vs Ballistic Gel in Ultra Slow Mo - The Slow Mo Guys ruclips.net/video/Nh9AAZqW6CU/видео.html&ab_channel=TheSlowMoGuys Cavitation and hydrostatic shock would have been horrendous to the wearer of that cuirass.
He said the ball flew at 400 miles per hour. The exit muzzle velocity is super sonic on a 6lber. That ball hit that chest likely closer to 6-700 miles per hour.
Physics is a somewhat volatile field, with so many factors contributing to various results. Why is the hole in the back of the cuirass so much larger than the front? Maybe because the metal had less resistance to flex in the back from an outgoing force than the front had with an incoming force: the man's torso kept the plate from blowing in as much, but nothing kept it from blowing out the back. Another commenter on this video (thenamethatwasntaken2314) points out that the man's ribs could have ripped through the back along with the projectile. It's certainly worth investigation, but I don't think that's the smoking gun, or, perhaps smoking cannon, that the investigator presumes it to be.
@@rhetorical1488😂 not really, mostly because the bullet turns sideways after hitting soft tissue, goes in head firts, comes out sideways or but first, simple physics.
The conversion of energy trauma liquidated the entire contents of his rib cage.. plus skeletal damage etc.. without any chest organs and with no neural connection system he would have legally died within a moment.. his head may have stayed functional for some time as this was noted with beheadings... the cannonball would likely be no greater than 6 pounder.. the hole is very often much bigger than the shot as the energy transfer would carry the surrounding material...
Well, I have visited the website of the "Musée de l´Armée" and also an article published by the "Fondation Napoleón" and both coincide. The information regarding the dead soldier (Francois Antoine Fauveau) came from a little book that was in the inner pocket of the padded vest worn under the cuirass. It may have been a kind of equivalent to the German "soldbuch" which acted as a kind of personal ID. The family tradition claims that the dead soldier was not Antoine but his brother who agreed to substitute him as he was going to get married. Something perfectly possible but rare. In France, under the First Empire individuals willing to avoid the draft were allowed by law to pay for a substitute who would take his place in the army. I believe the French authorities. This fellow David Videcette tried to make a hill out of a grain of sand.
Decades ago, I was in St John Ambulance & volunteered to be a 1st aider at all sorts of public events. In our training, we were taught about gunshot wounds. When someone is shot through, the exit wound generally is bigger & messier than the entrance wound. So it's not just historical weapons that do that. A bullet pierces on the way in, making a small hole, but bursts out of the back bringing tissue out with it.
Nicely done Metatron. Just a small thing with horse artillery and foot artillery. Both are actually pulled by horses. The difference is that horse artillery is very often attached to cavalry units to support them directly because they are fast-moving while foot artillery supports the infantry. It was useful to have horse artillery attached to cavalry because if the cavalry finds an infantry formation that has formed square for example, you can roll up the artillery and start disrupting it with shot. In theory keeping these units supporting each other (as well as using infantry and skirmishers) means you can deal with just about any situation on the battlefield which is why Napoleon's corps system was so effective. Instead of having the elements acting independently, Napoleon essentially created sub armies that had elements of cavalry, infantry, and artillery working together so they could be highly adaptable. We still use this sort of organization in modern militaries today as combined arms is still crucial to modern warfare. The organization just looks different as the nature of warfare and armies has changed since the 19th century.
@IanKerridge-gg7gl Well, not quite. His intel was bad. We aren't precisely sure why he launched the cavalry attack but the explanation most historians agree on is that the British appeared to be retreating so he wanted to unleash the killing blow. It was still wrong to not send infantry support but he didn't send the cavalry knowing the British were in square formations behind the hill.
Looking at the pictures the hole in the breastplate isn't just a puncture hole but there is material missing which would mean that some of the metal from it would have carried through with the cannonball making the exit hole larger.
Isn't the hole a couple inches bigger because the metal of the breastplate bent on impact? If you bend the metal back into place, the hole will be smaller.
Also, the curvature of the front would have favored compression vs tension for the back. Add in the support of the chest for the front, vs no support in the back, and some potential hydraulic shocks, getting a bit of a flower petal opening on the back makes sense.
Another explanation could be this. It's very unlikely that a cannonball would hit its target from straight on and dead level. It's much more likely that it was on the downward path of its trajectory and entered slightly from one side or the other. This would create a slightly larger hole, both vertically and horizontally, than the actual size of the projectile.
The hole in the breastplate isn't just a puncture hole but there is material missing as well which would mean that some of the metal from it would have carried through with the cannonball making the exit hole larger.
You all make fantastic points. Also, I think when there is an impact that big, the shock creates a crater. You can see that in the way the metal bent on the breastplate.
The temporary stretch cavity of a ball that size would have swelled that person's body up to twice it's size inside of that armor. He would have popped like squeezing a grape.
Okay, if this is real battle damage. The victim expired 3 seconds later. The right lung would haven blown out. The right arm would be detached from the thorax because the thoracic girdle would be compromised. The right carotid and sub clavian artery would be severed leading to death in a matter of seconds. That’s if the cavitation within the body didn’t pulverize the heart. You are kind of over thinking this. Or, this whole armor is a fake because I think the armor would not stand up structurally to handle an impact like that. A direct hit to the chest, regardless of the diameter of shot, would most likely pulverize the entire upper torso. Either way, it’s still an instant death, your brain just might need a few moments to realize it. And that is the science behind a massive chest wound.
Humans are funny. You'll see one person survive an impossibly horrific accident or battle wound, but you'll see another person, who outwardly seemed just as healthy, fall over deceased from a mild knock that seemed like nothing.
15:20 “excellent shot” while tragic is just so badass to say the lease. To be fatally injured and praise the luck of the shot is fascinating. I love history so much.
Regarding the entry/exit: The pressure wave exerted by a projectile on a body always causes a massive (usually temporary) cavity. Given the mass of a cannonball and the velocity at which it travels, the pressure wave created by its impact WOULD be disproportionate to the size of the projectile, and the cavitation would likely be large enough snap the elastic tissues of the human body, making the damage permanent. HOWEVER, that does still cause problems for the entry. I'm not especially experienced with cannonball ballistics, but it is unusual for a projectile to cavitate steel on impact. It's possible the shockwave of the impact was sufficient to effectively blast the steel open, although that's more true of naval projectiles. In short, the ballistics are odd, but not impossible.
I agree with you on the exit hole. I shoot things (mostly wood) all the time and it always produces a larger exit hole. In that particular case, likely due to the deformation of the projectile. However, I see the same effect when hunting; the exit wound is much larger and there wouldn't be much to cause deformation there. It's best explained by cavitation, in that case. I think I can offer an explanation for the entry hole as well though. It's very unlikely that a cannonball would hit its target from straight on and dead level. It's much more likely that it was on the downward path of its trajectory and entered from slightly one side or the other. This would create a slightly larger hole, both vertically and horizontally, than the actual size of the projectile.
@@tucknet actually the entry hole is not that hard to explain, a round bullet has no point meaning it forces itself through the metal, which in turn makes the hole larger than with modern bullets that has a more piercing force. The larger the impact force is, the larger the hole becomes, because the kinetic impact forces it to the side. We see it when we fires muskets at metal, and although i havent personally done it with a canon, i would imagine those would give an even larger effect. I mean look at it, it's entry hole is shredded, not pierced.
@aule10 Yes, this is, of course, correct. Just to clarify, I never suggested that the armour was pierced by a pointed projectile. I'm well aware that a cannonBALL is round-you might even call it a... ball. In fact, my statement implies a round object. A pointed projectile wouldn't deform the entry hole in nearly the same way that I'm suggesting the cannonball has. I was suggesting that the angle of impact would exaggerate the effect you are describing. I frequently shoot wood targets on my land using both round ball in my black powder rifle and rounded slugs in my shotgun. When hitting at even a slight angle, it generates a larger entry hole than when hitting it dead on. In either case, the entry hole is slightly larger than the projectile, but more pronounced at an angled entry. I hope that has clarified things.
well he's obviously never seen the affects of a car crash: metal deforms crazy amounts when hit at high speeds when the cannon ball hit a good amount of the plate bent inwards accounting for the large entry and on exit the metal was likely torn apart by the shot not to mention his shattered bones being driven out of him didn't help
One of my cousins was cut in half via cannonball during the French and Indian War. Incidentally, he was being court-marshaled at the time. He did not survive.
A Confederate Officer was struck by a cannon ball during the Seven Days. The Hospital refused to treat him since he had no chance to survive. He Wife cared for him and he survived. Less chance of staff infection away from the hospital. His Jacket is in the Memorial Hall Museum in New Orleans.
The professor makes a few good points. on better investigation, particularly on the identity of the wearer. But then goes on to make several weak arguments against its authenticity. The Allied artillery at Waterloo (British, Hanoverian, Dutch/Belgian) were 9pdr, 6pdr, 5.5 inch howitzers and 24 pd howitzers. Not only solid shot was used but also spherical shell and cannister. I;ve seen the piece and small pictures may not show numerous pits around the entrance hole. I am not sure what made these but guessed debris that accompanies the ball out of the cannon. Again just a guess but that suggested to me a fairly close range. The carabiniers were indeed committed last by order of Ney himself and suffered severe casualties making a charge alone and making a good target. I would say that Cuirass must of had a body in it when hit (or I would think it would have been much more crumpled) and could not have survived more then a few minutes, but I suspect death was close to instantaneous. Tissue/bone damage too catastrophic. I don't know the true physics but have little to no problem believing the mass of bones and tissue could make a larger exit hole seeing as the Carabinier cuirass was only 2-3 mm wrought iron plated over with red brass, especially with the cannon projectile leading the way.
The part about the hole in the back being bigger than the front is a very weak argument. We know this happens. It not caused by a modern bullet deforming of breaking up. It's caused by pressure. We know the damage, the very same types of cannonball caused to wooden ships too. The hole was almost always larger on the other side, for the same reason.
Both Napoleon and England were big fans of propaganda at this point in history. They both used woodcuts. The English to counter it used to follow Napoleon's people around showing the people in other towns the other French propaganda leaflets handed out elsewhere. The propaganda was really cheesy so just showing what Napoleon handed out in another town was enough to make it obvious it was bull crap. Today the truth like that fits under the umbrella of misinformation/disinformation. All powers consider the most dangerous misinformation/disinformation the actual truth. Because nothing shatters the delusion of propaganda quite like the truth.
I don't want to get too grizzly, but there are plenty of video examples out of Ukraine of people surviving horrific injuries for a disturbingly long amount of time. Awful stuff.
Looking at the hole, you would think he died there and then, but people have survived some horrific injuries. Looking at where it is, he would've lost a lung, which in itself, isn't fatal. More to the centre, he would've certainly died, but there's a chance he survived being hit there.
@@creepingdread88 "he would've lost a lung, which in itself, isn't fatal" today, with modern medical response, yeah. Back then it was a bit of a different level of care...
I see that image and the first thing that comes to my mind is Italo Calvino's "Il Visconte Dimezzato" (also 15:18). You can say I'm not the kind of History buff I should be, in order to be into the video's content (LOL!), yet I find it very interesting and informative. Thanks for your videos!
When those shot were fired, some were angled to bounce just in front of the rank of men. That bounce sent rocks and pebbles and pretty much anything else flying in a cone of debris towards the target like shrapnel.. this Idea was gotten from hunters. If you are hunting with a .75 caliber and spot a squirrel, you do not want to shoot the squirrel directly . Nothing would be left. Thus you shoot the limb just under the squirrel and let the splintered wood do the job. The practice is called " Barking the squirrel" . With a cannon shot, it still gets the multi projectile effect with a single ball. Done correctly, that ball could also be bounced through more than one rank of men.
As already mentioned, hydrostatic shock, from far smaller projectiles, compresses the heart and easily causes death. Surviving the hydraulic compression caused by a cannon ball is impossible.
My theory, that the damage to the cuirass may be plausible. An iron ball, out of an early 19th century cannon, isn't as fast or stable as modern bullets. A modern bullet punctures the target, the old ball tares the ductile metal apart. For the front plate: The frayed metal folds inwards and creates a bigger hole than the original ball. For the hole in the backplate: Passing through the front plate and the body, decelerated the projectile and caused it to slightly deflect or even tumble a bit. Causing more of the mentioned above. Also, the material on the backplate looks like it was a bit harder and less ductile than the front plate. The additional shattering of the material helped to create an even bigger exit hole. There is a RUclipsr named The Cannoneer. He may be able to recreate the shot, if he can get hold of a suitable replica.
2:10 A semi-related example: On December 31st, 1369, Sir John Chandos was struck in the socket of his missing eye with a lance that penetrated into his skull. He did not die from that wound until the next day (though it seems that he never did regain consciousness). Obviously, he didn't survive, but it is the kind of wound one might assume to be instantly fatal, and it was not. By the way, this story (and a general fascination with John Chandos in general) is why I refer to New Years Eve as "The John Chandos Memorial Vigil".
I'm a bit surprised that he had so many issues with the hole in the back being bigger. The cannonball, apart from creating cavitation and huge amounts of pressure it would need to displace the bone, skin, jacket, shirt, muscle, connective tissue, and part of the front plate of the cuirass, which need to go somewhere, so I would assume it would blow out a bigger hole unless the pressure blew out of his arm or neck. (I was a paramedic and trauma nurse but I've never seen cannon ball trauma so what do I know)
Unfortunately, he is comparing apples with oranges. Bullets do tumble producing larger exit wounds, but a cannon ball is round. He needs to look at musket balls and the damage they do in order to determine if his hypothesis is correct. Also, he needs to understand that metallurgy was much more primitive and less precise. The metal on the back of the cuirass could have been inferior to the front. The particulars of the wearer and the damage sustained are left to history. Without documentation we can't know.
@@herrskeletal3994 My fifty-caliber musket ball will deform if it hits bone, yes. Believe it or not, so will a cannon ball. Just not as much. That's physics.
On the topic of surviving what one would assume is fatal injury, a friend of mines father was sniped in the head at the battle of tumbledown during the Falklands war. He survived and tv movie called Tumbledown was made about him in 88 where he was played by a young Colin Firth. He suffered some paralysis down one side leaving one arm in a sling and a pronounced limp but overall made a pretty miraculous recovery, despite being at the end of the triage queue for treatment because he was considered likely a lost cause. The wildest story I've ever read though is of a woman in Australia who was attacked by two guys by a roadside. Her throat was cut so deeply that it was considered a partial decapitation and she was gutted. The men did not bother to finish her off, thinking her wounds impossible to survive. When they left she stood up, and felt her head begin to tip backwards and nearly topple off like nearly headless Nick in Harry Potter. She was forced to use one hand to push down on her head to hold it in place and the other to hold in her intestines. She walked to safety and was able to identity her attackers. It's so wild that if you saw it in a movie it would stretch your suspension of disbelief past breaking point and you'd probably think it was ridiculous hollywood b.s. It's worth noting of course that in both cases their survival was in large part due to modern medicine and historically there likely would of been considerably less that could be done for them. The brain surgery done on my friends father was very complicated, took many hours and was a bit of Hail Mary even so. Still we do know that historically people did survive pretty terrible wounds. We have skulls that show deep scaring and gouges from severe head wounds, that can't of been what killed them because it shows clear signs of having healed.
The Question could maybe answered by investigating it for residue of human blood. It is unlikely that the museum was able to remove all traces of potential blood on it.
Back from a nice family weekend and happy to see an awesome pedantic video about this Cuirass, nothing better to finish this Sunday evening, Metatron you are the best GLORY TO ROME
The cuirass is located at The Musée de l'Armée (Army Museum) at Les Invalides in Paris. I just went there in October and HIGHLY recommend to everyone visiting Paris, especially history buffs. Not only is Napoleon buried there, but the museum is full of endless halls of military history dating back to pre-Roman times. If you want to see everything in one trip get there early, because I had to come back a second day to explore the museums section on the world wars! They have countless artifacts and weapons from literally every conflict France has ever fought in, including spoils of war from other nations. Also, if you have time, go to the very top floor where they have large dioramas of every historically significant border fort in France.
I forgot to add that after walking through all of this history and seeing various other destroyed artifacts of war throughout the museum, you really wouldn’t think at all that anyone would fake this. It just seems silly to dishonor the lives of the men that actually died on those battlefields. The atmosphere of the museum is one that reminds the visitor that everything you see here was paid for in blood. Everything you have today is because countless men and women fought and died for this land, and here is how they did it. There isn’t much of a political story or spin to the objective matter of someone getting shot with a cannonball. We all know this happened to someone at some point, so why fake that?
Simple physics. The projectile enters with just the diameter of the projectile. But hydrostatic energy as the projectile enters the body plus the energy of the disrupted tissues carried along with the projectile will most definitely create a larger exit
I'm no artillery specialist, I'm simply a 3d Modeler, using spatial thinking, if we look straight from the front it is obviously that the ball struck not straight from the front but from the side, as the armor have an angle from the front with a sharp edge, the human profile being also one elongated cylinder when looked from above, the ball hitting from the side in this way is somewhere close to 90° angle in relation to the armor in the entrance , but in the exit is another story, it drags on the armor behind throughout a elongated perimeter of the armor, all this not accounting for the shock-wave effect, the iron entering is just pushing air aside so the entrance is always cleaner, but the exit it has to push a lot of "meat" sideways what will make for a messier exit, this battle damage to me make total sense by geometry alone
Metatron, you need to refine your research into Napoleonic artillery: foot batteries, or foot artillery, simply meant that the gun crews weren’t mounted - they were on foot while the guns and caissons were pulled by horses. Horse artillery, or horse batteries, were meant to be much more mobile and to accompany the cavalry. For this, the gun crews were mounted on horses. For both types, once the guns we’re unlimbered, they were all wrestled into place by hand and, after discharge, moved back to their firing positions by hand.
At 9:05 I think your description of Foot and Horse Atillery is not entirely accurate. Foot artillery also transported the cannon with horses. The difference was whether the crew rode on horseback or moved on foot.
This investigator has no idea about balistics and gun shots, the fact that the back hole is way bigger is due to the simple fact that the impact create a pressure wave inside the body that diverge a lot, there is also the fact that not only the ball went out but also all the meat and bones that were on the way. A high speed impact creates some kind of explosion in a medium. A good example are meteorites, the speed is so high that they explode on impact with more power that if they were made of explosives. The kinetic energy can be superior to the equivalent chemical energy. So that canon ball creates some kind of explosion in the body with a pressure wave and will create a huge hole in the back.
4:38 There was more then 4 types of cannon munitions used in that time period. You had round ball or solid shot, canister shot, grape shot, shrapnel shot, quicklime shot, case shot, chain/split shot, explosive shot, carcass shot and that's just off the top of my head.
The mind is an incredible thing; the entire time i watch this video, the galloping, distorted strains of “the Trooper” play in my head. A fitting soundtrack
The dude forgot that in real life friendly fire is always ON! Even if the British didn't have 12 pdr(they actually did) the French did and a stray French cannonball has the ability to kill Frenchmen, British, Dutch and Prussians. Afterall, to cannon all men are equal.
at the battle, we had captured cannon and Dutch and Prussian cannon and also maybe other nations, i dont know the poundage of those ,but many probably do.
Oh yeah. No one is surviving that. Assuming his heart and lungs were left in fact, he would have bled to death in seconds. The massive loss of blood pressure would be instant kill.
Mr Videcette Sounds like a man who has never shot a firearm in his entire life, of course the rear hole is larger and why does he assume it caused by bullets fragmenting. Also musket balls don't usually fragment, they are solid lead and usually moving slowly compared to modern rounds, they squish and deform in most cases.
A small correction on your presentation the difference between horse artillery and foot artillery is that the gunners were mounted for horse artillery while the gunners for foot artillery walked beside the guns. Both horse artillery and foot artillery used horses to move the artillery pieces.
There is absolutely no way someone struck like that survives more than a few milliseconds. They'll not only have lost a lung, but most of the heart and a good chunk of the spine as well due to cavitation.
Foot artillery meant only that the gunners were on foot and walked, not that the guns were pushed by hand. The guns and limbers were always drawn by horses in this period. In the horse artillery, the gunners were also mounted so the entire battery could move about at cavalry speeds or nearly so. On the article claim, I think it is entirely possible for the exit to be larger than the entrance. This happens even if you shoot a bucket of water with a rifle, as the hydrostatic shock of the impact is transmitted to the back of the target as a shock-wave that will travel ahead of the projectile (once it slows to subsonic in the medium). It is perfectly normal to see a wide seam blown out of a large container behind a small entry hole. The "projectile" causing that is just incompressible water. On the marriage of the named soldier, surely the most likely explanation is that the identification of the wearer is mistaken, not that he supposedly survived or anything of that sort. Overall the investigator's claims are not proven; at most others before him uncovered a mis-ID of the soldier, while the investigator himself has not provided much of anything.
Even if the cannonball doesn't fragment into shrapnel itself, it is still creating shrapnel from the cuirass and bone that it's smashing through. I'm sure there's a term for when body parts become shrapnel, but I can't find it; I'm sure it was mentioned in a Lindybeige interview video.
Hey Metatron someone just made a video about the newest assassins creed and how he was given permision to play it earlier, he mentioned the lack of torches in the game and said he even asked to the developers specifically the gameplay director about why they were removed he responded with "Because everything in Japan is made of light wood and paper, if we gave players torches and the ability to burn things down they would just burn down every CASTLE the second they arrive and that wouldn't make for a very fun game", I immidiately remember your video "amazing facts about medieval castles you didn't know", it's baffling how little reaseach these people did to not know about shikkui plaster, if you're interested the video is called "I played Assassins creeed shadows..." and the youtuber is Luke Stephens, the quote is on minute 57 second 36.
Think you would enjoy the latest History Hit video, where a classicist critiques the movie Pompeii. She seemed to be someone you would enjoy, maybe a palette cleanser after the last HH video you watched!
There was a Confederate General from Somerset County, Maryland by the name of John Winder who was hated so much by his command that the troops were planning to "Frag" ( kill him during battle) him, however fate stepped in and took care of Gen. Winder when a solid shot cannon ball from the enemy removed his head. Even the commanding general actually put in his after battle report that his command celebrated at his demise. Strangely, there is two other famous/infamous Generals from Somerset County, Md. who also served the Confederacy. Gen. Arnold (Jones) Elzey of the 1st. Battalion of Maryland Infantry that became the 2nd. Battalion of Maryland Infantry. The other was Gen. Henry Winder who was in fact the overall commander of all prisoner of war camps east of the Mississippi. He contracted a deadly illness while inspecting a Salisbury, NC. He was the person who was to be hanged for the tragedies at Andersonville POW Camp in Georgia. Wertz became the replacement scapegoat and was hung instead.
Unfortunately, seen worse wounds where people survived way too long, if for only moments. Most incapacitations are psychological. The heart can be completely destroyed and the subject will still have 10 - 20 seconds of conscious fight in them. The only physically effective immediate incapacitation, is a critical shock to the central nervous system, ie brain/brainstem. Even then, a subject may 'live' for a significant time after conscious action has ceased. A more accurate statement would be that anyone wearing that armor would've incurred an unsurvivable wound.
Having used round ball muzzleloader to hunt deer, one time I discovered that the round lead ball punched the shoulder blade with a perfect round hole the same size of the ball. But the exit wound was many times larger due to the bone fragments and expansion of the lead ball. Even an iron ball will cause a larger exit due to bone fragments and the displaces muscle tissue.
Heavy and slow (if the cannonball has spent a great amount of its velocity) projectiles have the tendency of making the most grievous punctures on resistive materials. If you try to drive your finger through tinfoil the puncture would be of irregular shape and with a really "forceful" look altogether. Also the English did have 12 pdr guns -with quite a large variety, to say the least- through the Napoleonic wars with the best variety, the 12 pdr of 18cwt, being used until the decade of 1880s.
this can best be seen on naval battles. a fast ball will make a nice clean hole right thru the wall but a ball that is slow will deposit all of its kinetic energy into that wall and the splinter shotgun effect on the other side was a leading cause of death in battle.
When I first visited the Bayeux Tapestry in the city of Bayeux in 1994, the museum audio guide said the tapestry was made by William the Conqueror's wife assisted by her household ladies. They sewed the tapestry by their own hands as a labor of love to celebrate the Queen's husband's victory. I revisited the tapestry and the museum last year in 2024 and now the story has been changed to William actually paying a monastery to sew the tapestry as a propaganda piece. Museums getting things wrong happens all the time.
Historical wars is notoriously when it comes to mixing up records. It might have been someone with a simular name in the unit that died. When it comes to the damage. I would be supriced. if anyone could find a entrence and exit hole from a canon that are the same size.
at first I was like "what actual difference does it make whether the man died the second he hit the ground or hours later? the man still died.", but then I remembered whose content I am watching. do carry on...
Interestingly the most common cause of battlefield wounds in this time was fragments of bone becoming airborne shrapnel from those struck by cannon fire. So you can imagine being in closely packed formations the effect this has.
I'm confused. This is a cuirass, but its wearer is repeatedly referred to in a way that seems to be a reference to a rifleman of some sort. What am I missing?
The effectiveness of the napoleonic cuirass shines on cavalry combat where the firearms are of lower power and melee combat are common, but when charging an infantry line or artillery postions they're just as effective as most heavy cavalry which are unarmored.
There is a selection of gruesome exhibits from Waterloo in the Surgeon's Hall Museum in Edinburgh, Scotland. A skull scored with sabre cuts and a femur with a musket ball still embedded for instance. There are also some watercolours of soldiers being treated for wounds including one who had a musket ball enter his upper forehead and become embedded under his scalp!
The breastplate at the front is supported(of sorts) by the chest and while that obviously isn't enough to prevent penetration it might be enough to keep the hole kinda round. The back does not have that support which might lead to more stretching and tearing of the metal as the ball goes through leading to a larger hole with a more erratic appearance and any pre-existing flaw in the metal or just a slight thinning of the back plate might exaggerate that even further. and lets not forget it's not just the ball coming out it's bits of metal and bone and lots of meat and liquid. As for the hole being too large at the front, this could also be because the metal got stretched and torn just outside the ball's diameter creating a slightly larger hole as opposed to the ball cutting through like a cookie cutter.
If you've got access to a .22 rifle, next time you have some ham in the fridge that's past its use by date, and a saved chicken wishbone, find yourself a 40mm sprung steel bulldog clip, like many a riffle range use to secure targets. Pack with ham and bones, and send it down range. Ham and bones exit by all holes, not just the oversized one you can punch at the back.
What could be fake here is the details to the story, Now the hole could be made against an empty breastplate for fun, say they went out of use. But the much larger rear hole indicates to me it was an body inside it. Unlike lead musket balls an massive iron ball would not deform hitting an millimeter thick steel plate so it empty the rear hole should look more than the front.
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Link to the article
davidvidecette.com/blog/2022/1/11/is-the-worlds-most-famous-piece-of-armour-a-fake
All the rest of the links to further your study
www.google.com/search?sca_esv=8ae233b4ae284247&sxsrf=ADLYWIKyVMJYgScbJ3dM2iU1KSo_k04wOw:1737501853385&q=Napoleonic+cannon+ball+injury+on+human+bodies+pdf&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjF55Hm-oeLAxVLMdAFHSkpFhsQBSgAegQIDBAB&biw=2048&bih=1017&dpr=1.88
www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/arrqmj/what_did_cannonball_impacts_actually_look_like_in/?rdt=47494
www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/amputations-and-civil-war
www.jstor.org/stable/45114512
muttermuseum.org/static/ad4d1c83d23bf66cf008a69f6bf49da9/civilwar_lp4_fnl.pdf
civilwartalk.com/threads/effects-of-cannon-ball-injury.209488/
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1879981718300391
www.npshistory.com/publications/battlefield/hwp/18th-century-artillery-manual-2016.pdf
Metatron!
Are there any places that most people are not aware of that the Romans ventured/influenced?
Love from SA🇿🇦
If you can you should visit this years battle of Waterloo. It promises to be a very big event . (Bob 79th Cameron Highlanders Light company)
Thanks for sharing, as always. Excellent community, noble ones. It is difficult to comprehend the difficulties endured by the soldiers in question, so may we benefit from their exemplary noble efforts.
I’ll be there👍👌
5:30 I don't remember the book, but I'm pretty sure there is a Dragonlance book that had a goblin do this exact thing. Though I read it a long time ago, it may not have been Dragonlance, but it was fantasy.
Have you ever seen an unopened aluminum can shot with a bullet? Small hole on entrance and totally blown out in the back. Its not about the size of the bullet or fragments of hard material being dragged out the back. it is the kinetic energy of the impact pressurizing the contents and essentially exploding the container. Not to dissimilar to armor with a body inside it (which is mostly liquid).
I looked for this comment. Water doesn't compress very well.
@@intractablemaskvpmGy that as may be, however, water is not used for modern hydraulic systems, because it is in fact compressible.
Finally some smart-thinking
"All the evidence suggests...” says the journalist who has zero evidence, just his own opinion. He's such a hypocrite. The bit that really annoyed me is his baseless assertion that a cannon ball wouldn't leave a bigger exit wound. Trash-tier reporting, regardless of the armour's authenticity.
@kramelbbiw ngl at first i thought you were calling metatron a journalist but then i got later in the video and uuhh...yeah. vidicette or whatever his name is talking out his booty cheeks
"Why was the hole in the backface at odds with the hole in the front of the breastplate"
Every gun enthusiast over the age of 12 is screaming at their screen right now. The fact that this Vidcette thinks fragmenting bullets is the primary mechanism of action that causes a larger exit wound shows he's never treated M855 wounds or ever examined military wounds. Hydrostatic shock and material-inertia spreading out from the source of impact play a much higher role.
Further more, on a convex object most of the force is compressive, and upon an exit of the concave inner side, it would be mechanical sheer force. Completely different plastic-deformation and material properties.
Career men who do one thing for 30 years need to be very careful when trying to examine larger topics. All they know is that one thing, and in everything else, they tend to be very uneducated.
Very good points and I was thinking along similar lines myself.
I was thinking the same. I have don some pinking. a 6.5*55 swedish blows a alminium can almost apart. even if I use a FMJ. Not that the bullite exploded on inpact. It didn´t even care about the can.
@@exploatores I presume you mean a full can, like a can of soda or a can of beans, right?
@@jakedee4117 we mostly filled them with water. even if the top of a can of beans was open. It made a huge hole in the back.
He says it's a 12cm hole in the front, the Blomfeld is a 9 pounch and only 10cm, a 12 pound is just over 11cm, so one of two things spring to mind, perhaps a captured french gun, or there was a 12 pound british gun there (they were used by the British though some sources say they were used at waterloo and simply called a 'Blomfeld' like the 9 pound version, others just use the term 'Blomfeld' to denote the new carrieage design) or possibly, the charge had bee turned and he got hit by his own cannons fleeing... But i was confused by the 'ex scotland yard' chap.
1. Nobody is surviving that specific shot.
2. Exit wounds/holes are almost always larger than the entry wound/hole.
Cannon shot would not necessarily deform while passing through a soft, fleshy human. The size and density of the shot matters.
@@jjww30 deformation has nothing to do with it, it’s the fact it is passing through material( human body) that doesn’t want to compress easily, so it forces it out the path of least resistance, creating an irregular exit shape. Like shooting a tin can that’s empty vs one that is full, the full can will explode, the empty one will not explode.
also if you somehow you manage to survive your pretty much dying rather quick from infection. I mean that wound would have been infected damn quickly and you would likely qhave a nasty case of gangrene setting in. this is pre antibiotics.
The cavity wound would destroy heart, lungs and all major arteries, so you don't have to worry about infection.
If there were someone in this plate, he would be 100% dead in seconds.
@@poil8351True but Metrons point was we don't know fir sure if he died instantly or 5 min later without sources. You can survive initial injuries that are obsoletely devastating for short periods and sometimes even days after. I would say it is likely the wound would have resulted in a quick death and probably instant, but he could have lingered for several minutes before dying.
It's too bad the investigative author hasn't heard of hydrostatic shock or watched a Taufledermaus video of them shooting 12 ga shotgun slugs thru ballistics gel.
A significant point that seems to have been ignored is that the rear hole is larger due to the metal being fractured and bent outwards. Put those folds back together and it will lose a significant part of its size.
Similarly the front hole is larger than whatever hit it as it's not just a cleanly blown hole, it's metal bent inwards pulling on metal around it. As a practical example take a sheet of metal, put a nail on it and strike it with a hammer - the displacement will be much larger than the size of the nail itself.
If someone was wearing this plate the injury would not be survivable. One lung would be instantly gone, the shockwave could have easily pulverized his other lung, hearth, spine, any other organ in the vicinity. If he died from that right that instant, or if he bled out over the next few seconds / minutes seems rather irrelevant.
The second paragraph of your comment is spot on. I cannot believe that Metatron would make such a foolish comment. A bloke that was hit in the chest by a small cannonball would have been killed immediately as if he had been hit in the head! What difference does it make if he died immediately or two hours later?
I'm not so sure about the hearth, though.....
It's probably very easy to verify on other plates.
@@TheEudaemonicPlague -The heart is basically right in the middle between the lungs - and connected with thick arteries and veins. If there is say a rapid overpressure - like if a large object just crashed through parts of the lung - then it will affect the heart too.-
Edit: Forget all that... i missed the joke.
@@ABaumstumpf He's making a joke about heart (organ) vs hearth (fireplace). The original poster surely means heart but for some reason added the extra h at the end.
People do survive stuff that is unbelievable.
I was ran over by a garbage truck in Vancouver, Washington in 2013. I did not die in an actual warzone but some muppet almost kills me in a crosswalk..
I am sure there is a joke somewhere here.
I now have about six titanium pins in my body.
My mother's boyfriend survived being hit by a train in 2015
@@BobGeanis Yikes.
Well, there is that saying that soldiers have difficulty adapting to civilian life. 😅
Seriously, though, I imagine you'd simply not expect mortal danger to come from such a source.
I think that officially makes you a superhero.
according to wikipedia, a woman was cut in half by a train and she was conscious and talkative inside the ambulance and died shortly after on the surgical bed.
I can understand being skeptical of unsourced statements, but I doubt anyone is going to survive a canonball going through their chest. The temporary cavity alone would probably destroy their spine. As for the hole in the back, it doesn't matter how soft skin is when it has been instantly accelerated to a few hundred miles an hour and forced through a metal plate that was already weakened by a canonball going through it. As for the case of him being alive on a marriage certificate, I could see a few things happening that could cause that, but most of them boil down to the fact that war is chaotic. Stuff is forgotten, stuff is destroyed, stuff is known only by people who died in battle, there are many ways that information can be lost that would clear up a mystery quickly.
As for a lack of rust, that could also be a function of the metal. I don't know the composition of the metal here, but some types of bronze can be very resistant to rust. There was a bronze sword recovered recently (within the last 20 years) that was recovered from an archeological dig in China that was in near perfect condition.
as someone who hunts their own food i can assure you the pressure wave sucking in air post projectile will LIQUIFY the internal organs. If he was impaled on a tree that size then yes he may have gotten unlucky and died after a week of sepsis
Not just the spine essentially every organ in the vicinity (basically all vital organs) it's like being shot in the brain, it's possible to survive but 99% of people won't.
Yeah, I was pretty shocked when he started to doubt the wound being immediately fatal...
🎩 Hi. Bronze doesn’t rust. Iron does.
@@robertgross1655 In keeping with the video, I am considering the word rust to refer to any slow forming metal oxide, in this case copper oxide assuming that my limited understanding of metallurgy holds. It may not be a scientific or technical definition, but it is commonly used enough to be understood. Most people understand what you mean when you say the statue of liberty has rusted.
Not a Cuirassiers but a Carabiniers cuirass.
All artillery is moved by animals mostly horses. Horse Artillery normally accompanies Cavalry and Foot Artillery normally stays on one spot but is brought there by horses..
that's correct! Maybe the smallest regimental guns could be transported for short distances by men but not on the march.
The greatest difference between horse and foot artillery is that the cannoniers in the first accompanied the piece on horseback while in the latter the cannoniers were sitting on the artillery chests, on caissons, or on "sausages" dirrectly over the carriage.
I was questioning it myself, since the Curiassiers had steel breast plates, and others worse brassed ones
Cuirassiers vs Carabiniers - That's possibly important when the author's challenge regarding corrosion is important. The Carabiniers' cuirasses were of iron plated with brass - so won't corrode in the same way.
Apparently Scotland Yard is not very well versed in ballistic exit wounds, a larger exit wound I would dare say is expected...especially with something as blunt as a cannon ball. I believe the concave nature of the back plate being punctured from the inside side also contributes to the size of the opening compared to the front plate being punctured on the convex side.
Should have waited another 10 seconds but I still stand by the fact that with a projectile as blunt as a cannon ball we would expect a larger exit.
britain is not known for it's gunshot civilian victims..
@@michelguevara151generally, not. However, there are significant amounts of shootings in various places. London, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham and others. It's not unheard of but still, somewhat, rare. Some by farmers, others by gangs.
25:38 the entrence hole has only the cannon ball entering while the exit hole has the cannon ball and internal matter exiting. More material being pushed in high pressure leads to bigger hole. It's not that complicated
Most people forget that bullets remove material, internally, as they transverse. Hitting that front plate would have pushed that sharp metal all the way out the rear, taking bones and organs as well. Terminal ballistics isn't for the common folk
Agreed, even though it’s softer than the metal, it’s still a good sized mass being pushed with tremendous force by the ball and would definitely make a larger exit.
I wonder if he said it by ignorance, or if he implies that the kind of hole is very different of other plates in the same situation.
@@guillaume4519 the phrasing sounded either ignorant or intentionally false (he could be lying for money or publicity).
Maybe it was just poorly phrased, but I'm doubtful of it.
@@guillaume4519 I would also think that if the plate was used for testing, it would have been empty inside except perhaps for a wooden cross to hold it upright. In that case the exit should have been very similar to the entrance. I’d be surprised to hear of them packing it with melons or an animal carcass for testing.
I was at an NSSA shoot once where a cannon crew depressed the barrel to far and the shot rolled forward a bit before the charge went of so the ball hit the ground about 12 ft in front of the muzzle and then rolled at what looked like the speed of a bowling ball for well over a hundred yards then up a 45 degree or so slope that was around 30 ft high and off into the woods where it knocked over a goodly sized tree. The amount of KE in it was truly amazing. A person trying to stop it wasn't going to have much luck.
Sadly, it was probably the shattered ribs of the man that broadened the whole in the back of his cuirass.
I agree.
The cannonball would have carried some of the breastplate through with it also making the hole in back bigger.
Vidicette argues that bones are softer than metal. I have heard stories of soft objects being forced through hard ones in hurricanes, but he has more experience with ballistics than I do. Also the whole in the front is reportedly too big to begin with. Other commenters make good points as well. I look forward to a follow up video. Someone call Tod Cuttler!
Exit wounds are usually bigger than entry wounds after all
Yeah this is the truth @@LoveBagpipes
For a particularly interesting story of battlefield wounds from cannonball wounds in the period, I recommend reading about one incident during the second day of Napoleon's first defeat as Emperor -- at Aspern-Essling in May 1809. Marshal Jean Lannes, the Duke of Montebello, was discussing the impasse of the day's fighting against the Austrians with his mentor and friend, General Charles Pouzet. Suddenly, a six-pound cannonball decapitated Pouzet as he was speaking. Marshal Lannes, deeply shaken by the loss of his friend, walked over to a ditch and sat down cross-legged to mourn in silence. Freakishly, a second cannonball quickly followed, skidded across the ground, ricocheting and smashing into his legs. The wound was initially not life threatening, but it rendered him unable to walk. Yet after an amputation, one of his legs became infected, and he died eight days later in agony. The Emperor was known to have said, "I lost the most distinguished general in my army, my companion in arms for sixteen years, and ... my best friend."
You are a very knowledgeable fellow and, perhaps, a "Napomaniac" like myself! 😂 If I remember correctly the whole incident is described in Marbot´s Memoirs.
"Rifle Regiment" is not a correct translation of "Carabiniers." A carbine is a shorter version of a conventionally long-barrelled gun, which could be either a smoothbore musket, or a rifle. A standard French musket was completely unwieldy to use from horseback and the Napoleonic French army didn't have rifles, as far as I know, except when employing German conscripts/mercenaries. A French Carabinier in 1815 didn't even have a carbine. He was a cuirassier in a slightly more flamboyant uniform, armed with a sabre and, I suppose, two pistols.
The detective is also wrong about the nature of artillery in Wellington's 1815 army. While it is true that the largest calibre British field guns (as opposed to howitzers) were nine-pounders, the Austrian Netherlands, i.e. modern-day Belgium, and the Netherlands had both been annexed by Napoleon, forced to fight for him and used, therefore, French equipment, which probably included twelve-pounder cannons at Waterloo, where they were allies of Britain.
Yeah, it's like people translating napoleonic era fusilier to riflemen while it's actually means musketeers, in english language the word 'rifle' is the successor of the 'musket' for a long firearm because rifling in the late 19th century are common.
Cuirassiers and Carabiniers carried muskets and later musketoons.
Usually the Napoleonic artillery preferred to skip the shot across the battlefield, but that day the battlefield was quite muddy and the elevation was higher than normal. According to battlefield reports his unit crested a ridge line when the artillery fired. This might be a part of why the cannon ball hit higher than usual.
A possible reason for the hole in back being so large is the hydraulic effect of the cannon ball passing through. It pushes quite a bit of material and fluids ahead of it. So a smaller entry hole than exit.
In my experience with ballistics, anything carrying enough kinetic energy to punch a clean hole through metal like that, would literally disintegrate anything on the inside. You would literally find an arm 30 meters away hanging from a tree. just my opinion.
Nonsense. The man's measuring the hole across, where the metal has been distorted, rather than where the imprint of the ball is clearest. Also note, being British, he's apparently unaware that it was an Allied army that fought at Waterloo, not a British army. Were the Dutch artillery batteries limited to 9-pounders?
Or Prussians for that matter.
@@burgundian777 It's possible of course that the trooper was still ahorse, or maybe afoot by the time the Prussians came on the field.
A quick search through the Anglo-allied order of battle shows no cannon larger than 9 pounders present, so in that respect the man is accurate.
@@Bayonet1809 Try a slower search. You might see more.
The British can't help themselves. "The barbary of the defeat suffered by Napoleon's army at Waterloo at the hands of the British" (21:37).
The British take credit for a victory won by a vast European coalition. Out of 120,000 Allied soldiers facing Napoleon's army at Waterloo (70,000 British, Dutch and Germans under Wellington and 50,000 Prussians under Blücher), the British contingent amounted to only 31,000 soldiers (including the 6,000 soldiers of the King's German Legion), i.e. a quarter of the total (the British nevertheless provided a great deal of financial resources and military equipment to the coalition army).
It is not for nothing that the name of Waterloo itself (chosen by Wellington) did not meet with unanimous approval: the Germans (who provided by far the most troops) preferred "Battle of the Belle-Alliance", the French "Battle of Mont-Saint-Jean".
What's more, the Battle of Waterloo was not a one-sided massacre, as author David Videcette suggests. The French fought bravely and stubbornly, inflicting 24,000 casualties on the allies (including 17,000 on Wellington's troops), at the cost of 26-27,000 casualties in their own ranks.
For those curious about the effects of the hit on the human body, the Slo Mo Guys have a video with a 'cannonball' about half the size and a tenth of the mass:
Cannon Ball vs Ballistic Gel in Ultra Slow Mo - The Slow Mo Guys
ruclips.net/video/Nh9AAZqW6CU/видео.html&ab_channel=TheSlowMoGuys
Cavitation and hydrostatic shock would have been horrendous to the wearer of that cuirass.
He said the ball flew at 400 miles per hour.
The exit muzzle velocity is super sonic on a 6lber. That ball hit that chest likely closer to 6-700 miles per hour.
Physics is a somewhat volatile field, with so many factors contributing to various results. Why is the hole in the back of the cuirass so much larger than the front? Maybe because the metal had less resistance to flex in the back from an outgoing force than the front had with an incoming force: the man's torso kept the plate from blowing in as much, but nothing kept it from blowing out the back. Another commenter on this video (thenamethatwasntaken2314) points out that the man's ribs could have ripped through the back along with the projectile. It's certainly worth investigation, but I don't think that's the smoking gun, or, perhaps smoking cannon, that the investigator presumes it to be.
depends if the ball was lead, iron or stone. modern firearm wounds do leave a larger exit hole as the bullet fragments, expands or tumbles.
@@rhetorical1488😂 not really, mostly because the bullet turns sideways after hitting soft tissue, goes in head firts, comes out sideways or but first, simple physics.
@ your reading comprehension lacking? the "tumble" sums up your entire sentence in one word🤦♀
Yes, that first theory is the one I would subscribe to.
I would explain the biger hole in the back by saying it's not only the cannonball leaving there is also the preasure of meat cloth and bones.
The conversion of energy trauma liquidated the entire contents of his rib cage.. plus skeletal damage etc.. without any chest organs and with no neural connection system he would have legally died within a moment.. his head may have stayed functional for some time as this was noted with beheadings... the cannonball would likely be no greater than 6 pounder.. the hole is very often much bigger than the shot as the energy transfer would carry the surrounding material...
Cool to see you covering this time period.
Well, I have visited the website of the "Musée de l´Armée" and also an article published by the "Fondation Napoleón" and both coincide. The information regarding the dead soldier (Francois Antoine Fauveau) came from a little book that was in the inner pocket of the padded vest worn under the cuirass. It may have been a kind of equivalent to the German "soldbuch" which acted as a kind of personal ID. The family tradition claims that the dead soldier was not Antoine but his brother who agreed to substitute him as he was going to get married. Something perfectly possible but rare. In France, under the First Empire individuals willing to avoid the draft were allowed by law to pay for a substitute who would take his place in the army. I believe the French authorities. This fellow David Videcette tried to make a hill out of a grain of sand.
Decades ago, I was in St John Ambulance & volunteered to be a 1st aider at all sorts of public events. In our training, we were taught about gunshot wounds. When someone is shot through, the exit wound generally is bigger & messier than the entrance wound. So it's not just historical weapons that do that. A bullet pierces on the way in, making a small hole, but bursts out of the back bringing tissue out with it.
Nicely done Metatron. Just a small thing with horse artillery and foot artillery. Both are actually pulled by horses. The difference is that horse artillery is very often attached to cavalry units to support them directly because they are fast-moving while foot artillery supports the infantry. It was useful to have horse artillery attached to cavalry because if the cavalry finds an infantry formation that has formed square for example, you can roll up the artillery and start disrupting it with shot. In theory keeping these units supporting each other (as well as using infantry and skirmishers) means you can deal with just about any situation on the battlefield which is why Napoleon's corps system was so effective. Instead of having the elements acting independently, Napoleon essentially created sub armies that had elements of cavalry, infantry, and artillery working together so they could be highly adaptable. We still use this sort of organization in modern militaries today as combined arms is still crucial to modern warfare. The organization just looks different as the nature of warfare and armies has changed since the 19th century.
Didn't work at Waterloo. Marshal Ney basically tried to attack infantry squares with just cavalry.
@IanKerridge-gg7gl Well, not quite. His intel was bad. We aren't precisely sure why he launched the cavalry attack but the explanation most historians agree on is that the British appeared to be retreating so he wanted to unleash the killing blow.
It was still wrong to not send infantry support but he didn't send the cavalry knowing the British were in square formations behind the hill.
Looking at the pictures the hole in the breastplate isn't just a puncture hole but there is material missing which would mean that some of the metal from it would have carried through with the cannonball making the exit hole larger.
Isn't the hole a couple inches bigger because the metal of the breastplate bent on impact? If you bend the metal back into place, the hole will be smaller.
I agree. If it was a perfect hole, then I'd doubt it was true. The hole looks right to me.
Also, the curvature of the front would have favored compression vs tension for the back. Add in the support of the chest for the front, vs no support in the back, and some potential hydraulic shocks, getting a bit of a flower petal opening on the back makes sense.
Another explanation could be this. It's very unlikely that a cannonball would hit its target from straight on and dead level. It's much more likely that it was on the downward path of its trajectory and entered slightly from one side or the other. This would create a slightly larger hole, both vertically and horizontally, than the actual size of the projectile.
The hole in the breastplate isn't just a puncture hole but there is material missing as well which would mean that some of the metal from it would have carried through with the cannonball making the exit hole larger.
You all make fantastic points. Also, I think when there is an impact that big, the shock creates a crater. You can see that in the way the metal bent on the breastplate.
The temporary stretch cavity of a ball that size would have swelled that person's body up to twice it's size inside of that armor. He would have popped like squeezing a grape.
Exit wounds are always bigger than the entry
Okay, if this is real battle damage. The victim expired 3 seconds later. The right lung would haven blown out. The right arm would be detached from the thorax because the thoracic girdle would be compromised. The right carotid and sub clavian artery would be severed leading to death in a matter of seconds. That’s if the cavitation within the body didn’t pulverize the heart. You are kind of over thinking this. Or, this whole armor is a fake because I think the armor would not stand up structurally to handle an impact like that. A direct hit to the chest, regardless of the diameter of shot, would most likely pulverize the entire upper torso. Either way, it’s still an instant death, your brain just might need a few moments to realize it. And that is the science behind a massive chest wound.
This is what happens when you are shot by a 9mm.
if its a 9 mm bolter maybe, antimatter mayhaps ?
@@KLanio-lr8yv phased plasma in a 40 watt range..
@@michelguevara151 nit kilo wat ?
@@generaljesus9825 “it blows the lung out of the body”🙌
Humans are funny. You'll see one person survive an impossibly horrific accident or battle wound, but you'll see another person, who outwardly seemed just as healthy, fall over deceased from a mild knock that seemed like nothing.
15:20 “excellent shot” while tragic is just so badass to say the lease. To be fatally injured and praise the luck of the shot is fascinating. I love history so much.
That's what French panache is all about.
Regarding the entry/exit:
The pressure wave exerted by a projectile on a body always causes a massive (usually temporary) cavity. Given the mass of a cannonball and the velocity at which it travels, the pressure wave created by its impact WOULD be disproportionate to the size of the projectile, and the cavitation would likely be large enough snap the elastic tissues of the human body, making the damage permanent.
HOWEVER, that does still cause problems for the entry. I'm not especially experienced with cannonball ballistics, but it is unusual for a projectile to cavitate steel on impact. It's possible the shockwave of the impact was sufficient to effectively blast the steel open, although that's more true of naval projectiles.
In short, the ballistics are odd, but not impossible.
I agree with you on the exit hole. I shoot things (mostly wood) all the time and it always produces a larger exit hole. In that particular case, likely due to the deformation of the projectile. However, I see the same effect when hunting; the exit wound is much larger and there wouldn't be much to cause deformation there. It's best explained by cavitation, in that case. I think I can offer an explanation for the entry hole as well though. It's very unlikely that a cannonball would hit its target from straight on and dead level. It's much more likely that it was on the downward path of its trajectory and entered from slightly one side or the other. This would create a slightly larger hole, both vertically and horizontally, than the actual size of the projectile.
@@tucknet actually the entry hole is not that hard to explain, a round bullet has no point meaning it forces itself through the metal, which in turn makes the hole larger than with modern bullets that has a more piercing force. The larger the impact force is, the larger the hole becomes, because the kinetic impact forces it to the side. We see it when we fires muskets at metal, and although i havent personally done it with a canon, i would imagine those would give an even larger effect. I mean look at it, it's entry hole is shredded, not pierced.
@aule10 Yes, this is, of course, correct. Just to clarify, I never suggested that the armour was pierced by a pointed projectile. I'm well aware that a cannonBALL is round-you might even call it a... ball. In fact, my statement implies a round object. A pointed projectile wouldn't deform the entry hole in nearly the same way that I'm suggesting the cannonball has. I was suggesting that the angle of impact would exaggerate the effect you are describing. I frequently shoot wood targets on my land using both round ball in my black powder rifle and rounded slugs in my shotgun. When hitting at even a slight angle, it generates a larger entry hole than when hitting it dead on. In either case, the entry hole is slightly larger than the projectile, but more pronounced at an angled entry. I hope that has clarified things.
well he's obviously never seen the affects of a car crash: metal deforms crazy amounts when hit at high speeds when the cannon ball hit a good amount of the plate bent inwards accounting for the large entry and on exit the metal was likely torn apart by the shot not to mention his shattered bones being driven out of him didn't help
One of my cousins was cut in half via cannonball during the French and Indian War. Incidentally, he was being court-marshaled at the time. He did not survive.
a very odd yet highly informative blurb. have a like
2:15 I mean; Simo Häyhä, for instance, got shot in the face by an exploding bullet, at the age of 34. He died, at the ripe age of 96.
yeeees it took his nose off. it did not travel through his head leaving a grapefruit size hole in the back
@ True.
White deaf, legend!
A Confederate Officer was struck by a cannon ball during the Seven Days. The Hospital refused to treat him since he had no chance to survive. He Wife cared for him and he survived. Less chance of staff infection away from the hospital. His Jacket is in the Memorial Hall Museum in New Orleans.
The professor makes a few good points. on better investigation, particularly on the identity of the wearer. But then goes on to make several weak arguments against its authenticity. The Allied artillery at Waterloo (British, Hanoverian, Dutch/Belgian) were 9pdr, 6pdr, 5.5 inch howitzers and 24 pd howitzers. Not only solid shot was used but also spherical shell and cannister. I;ve seen the piece and small pictures may not show numerous pits around the entrance hole. I am not sure what made these but guessed debris that accompanies the ball out of the cannon. Again just a guess but that suggested to me a fairly close range. The carabiniers were indeed committed last by order of Ney himself and suffered severe casualties making a charge alone and making a good target. I would say that Cuirass must of had a body in it when hit (or I would think it would have been much more crumpled) and could not have survived more then a few minutes, but I suspect death was close to instantaneous. Tissue/bone damage too catastrophic. I don't know the true physics but have little to no problem believing the mass of bones and tissue could make a larger exit hole seeing as the Carabinier cuirass was only 2-3 mm wrought iron plated over with red brass, especially with the cannon projectile leading the way.
So if it is a fake, it's a plausible one. War is never something to be wanted, but the grizzly nature described here is horrific.
The part about the hole in the back being bigger than the front is a very weak argument. We know this happens. It not caused by a modern bullet deforming of breaking up. It's caused by pressure. We know the damage, the very same types of cannonball caused to wooden ships too. The hole was almost always larger on the other side, for the same reason.
Whispering “excellent shot” after taking a cannonball through the side then passing out is something out of a novel or anime.
Both Napoleon and England were big fans of propaganda at this point in history. They both used woodcuts.
The English to counter it used to follow Napoleon's people around showing the people in other towns the other French propaganda leaflets handed out elsewhere.
The propaganda was really cheesy so just showing what Napoleon handed out in another town was enough to make it obvious it was bull crap.
Today the truth like that fits under the umbrella of misinformation/disinformation. All powers consider the most dangerous misinformation/disinformation the actual truth. Because nothing shatters the delusion of propaganda quite like the truth.
i think that person died within a minute of having a cannonball going through his chest.
If not then at least broken ribs for sure.
I don't want to get too grizzly, but there are plenty of video examples out of Ukraine of people surviving horrific injuries for a disturbingly long amount of time. Awful stuff.
Looking at the hole, you would think he died there and then, but people have survived some horrific injuries. Looking at where it is, he would've lost a lung, which in itself, isn't fatal. More to the centre, he would've certainly died, but there's a chance he survived being hit there.
@@creepingdread88 "he would've lost a lung, which in itself, isn't fatal" today, with modern medical response, yeah. Back then it was a bit of a different level of care...
I see that image and the first thing that comes to my mind is Italo Calvino's "Il Visconte Dimezzato" (also 15:18).
You can say I'm not the kind of History buff I should be, in order to be into the video's content (LOL!),
yet I find it very interesting and informative.
Thanks for your videos!
When those shot were fired, some were angled to bounce just in front of the rank of men. That bounce sent rocks and pebbles and pretty much anything else flying in a cone of debris towards the target like shrapnel.. this Idea was gotten from hunters. If you are hunting with a .75 caliber and spot a squirrel, you do not want to shoot the squirrel directly . Nothing would be left. Thus you shoot the limb just under the squirrel and let the splintered wood do the job. The practice is called " Barking the squirrel" . With a cannon shot, it still gets the multi projectile effect with a single ball. Done correctly, that ball could also be bounced through more than one rank of men.
Here's the usual full support for channel growth.
As already mentioned, hydrostatic shock, from far smaller projectiles, compresses the heart and easily causes death. Surviving the hydraulic compression caused by a cannon ball is impossible.
My theory, that the damage to the cuirass may be plausible.
An iron ball, out of an early 19th century cannon, isn't as fast or stable as modern bullets. A modern bullet punctures the target, the old ball tares the ductile metal apart.
For the front plate:
The frayed metal folds inwards and creates a bigger hole than the original ball.
For the hole in the backplate:
Passing through the front plate and the body, decelerated the projectile and caused it to slightly deflect or even tumble a bit. Causing more of the mentioned above.
Also, the material on the backplate looks like it was a bit harder and less ductile than the front plate. The additional shattering of the material helped to create an even bigger exit hole.
There is a RUclipsr named The Cannoneer. He may be able to recreate the shot, if he can get hold of a suitable replica.
I forgot the name of that channel, but mentioned that such exist.
thank you for putting the name up.
2:10 A semi-related example: On December 31st, 1369, Sir John Chandos was struck in the socket of his missing eye with a lance that penetrated into his skull. He did not die from that wound until the next day (though it seems that he never did regain consciousness). Obviously, he didn't survive, but it is the kind of wound one might assume to be instantly fatal, and it was not.
By the way, this story (and a general fascination with John Chandos in general) is why I refer to New Years Eve as "The John Chandos Memorial Vigil".
This was a super interesting video. I am really looking forward to the follow-up video.
The expert measured the hole diameter horizontally. The plate is not only has more curvature but more damage in the horizontal.
I'm a bit surprised that he had so many issues with the hole in the back being bigger. The cannonball, apart from creating cavitation and huge amounts of pressure it would need to displace the bone, skin, jacket, shirt, muscle, connective tissue, and part of the front plate of the cuirass, which need to go somewhere, so I would assume it would blow out a bigger hole unless the pressure blew out of his arm or neck. (I was a paramedic and trauma nurse but I've never seen cannon ball trauma so what do I know)
Unfortunately, he is comparing apples with oranges. Bullets do tumble producing larger exit wounds, but a cannon ball is round. He needs to look at musket balls and the damage they do in order to determine if his hypothesis is correct. Also, he needs to understand that metallurgy was much more primitive and less precise. The metal on the back of the cuirass could have been inferior to the front. The particulars of the wearer and the damage sustained are left to history. Without documentation we can't know.
could even be a stone cannon ball
Keeping in mind as well cannon balls generally are made of iron. Musket balls of lead a much more ductile metal
@@herrskeletal3994 I fail to see how what difference that would make in this experiment. We aren't talking about wire.
@j.r.warren5794 your musket ball is going to deform and that needs to be accounted for.
@@herrskeletal3994 My fifty-caliber musket ball will deform if it hits bone, yes. Believe it or not, so will a cannon ball. Just not as much. That's physics.
On the topic of surviving what one would assume is fatal injury, a friend of mines father was sniped in the head at the battle of tumbledown during the Falklands war. He survived and tv movie called Tumbledown was made about him in 88 where he was played by a young Colin Firth. He suffered some paralysis down one side leaving one arm in a sling and a pronounced limp but overall made a pretty miraculous recovery, despite being at the end of the triage queue for treatment because he was considered likely a lost cause. The wildest story I've ever read though is of a woman in Australia who was attacked by two guys by a roadside. Her throat was cut so deeply that it was considered a partial decapitation and she was gutted. The men did not bother to finish her off, thinking her wounds impossible to survive. When they left she stood up, and felt her head begin to tip backwards and nearly topple off like nearly headless Nick in Harry Potter. She was forced to use one hand to push down on her head to hold it in place and the other to hold in her intestines. She walked to safety and was able to identity her attackers. It's so wild that if you saw it in a movie it would stretch your suspension of disbelief past breaking point and you'd probably think it was ridiculous hollywood b.s. It's worth noting of course that in both cases their survival was in large part due to modern medicine and historically there likely would of been considerably less that could be done for them. The brain surgery done on my friends father was very complicated, took many hours and was a bit of Hail Mary even so. Still we do know that historically people did survive pretty terrible wounds. We have skulls that show deep scaring and gouges from severe head wounds, that can't of been what killed them because it shows clear signs of having healed.
The Question could maybe answered by investigating it for residue of human blood. It is unlikely that the museum was able to remove all traces of potential blood on it.
I don't think it is likely the any human residue would remain if it had been buried for 60 years then cleaned and restored before display.
Back from a nice family weekend and happy to see an awesome pedantic video about this Cuirass, nothing better to finish this Sunday evening, Metatron you are the best GLORY TO ROME
The cuirass is located at The Musée de l'Armée (Army Museum) at Les Invalides in Paris. I just went there in October and HIGHLY recommend to everyone visiting Paris, especially history buffs. Not only is Napoleon buried there, but the museum is full of endless halls of military history dating back to pre-Roman times. If you want to see everything in one trip get there early, because I had to come back a second day to explore the museums section on the world wars! They have countless artifacts and weapons from literally every conflict France has ever fought in, including spoils of war from other nations. Also, if you have time, go to the very top floor where they have large dioramas of every historically significant border fort in France.
I forgot to add that after walking through all of this history and seeing various other destroyed artifacts of war throughout the museum, you really wouldn’t think at all that anyone would fake this. It just seems silly to dishonor the lives of the men that actually died on those battlefields. The atmosphere of the museum is one that reminds the visitor that everything you see here was paid for in blood. Everything you have today is because countless men and women fought and died for this land, and here is how they did it. There isn’t much of a political story or spin to the objective matter of someone getting shot with a cannonball. We all know this happened to someone at some point, so why fake that?
Simple physics. The projectile enters with just the diameter of the projectile. But hydrostatic energy as the projectile enters the body plus the energy of the disrupted tissues carried along with the projectile will most definitely create a larger exit
As for the slightly larger entry point it can simply be attributed to the energetic nature between the cannon ball and the material of the cuirass
I’m sorry, but this shows a lack of simple ballistics knowledge and how projectiles interact with materials
I'm no artillery specialist, I'm simply a 3d Modeler, using spatial thinking, if we look straight from the front it is obviously that the ball struck not straight from the front but from the side, as the armor have an angle from the front with a sharp edge, the human profile being also one elongated cylinder when looked from above, the ball hitting from the side in this way is somewhere close to 90° angle in relation to the armor in the entrance , but in the exit is another story, it drags on the armor behind throughout a elongated perimeter of the armor, all this not accounting for the shock-wave effect, the iron entering is just pushing air aside so the entrance is always cleaner, but the exit it has to push a lot of "meat" sideways what will make for a messier exit, this battle damage to me make total sense by geometry alone
Metatron, you need to refine your research into Napoleonic artillery: foot batteries, or foot artillery, simply meant that the gun crews weren’t mounted - they were on foot while the guns and caissons were pulled by horses. Horse artillery, or horse batteries, were meant to be much more mobile and to accompany the cavalry. For this, the gun crews were mounted on horses. For both types, once the guns we’re unlimbered, they were all wrestled into place by hand and, after discharge, moved back to their firing positions by hand.
At 9:05 I think your description of Foot and Horse Atillery is not entirely accurate. Foot artillery also transported the cannon with horses. The difference was whether the crew rode on horseback or moved on foot.
This investigator has no idea about balistics and gun shots, the fact that the back hole is way bigger is due to the simple fact that the impact create a pressure wave inside the body that diverge a lot, there is also the fact that not only the ball went out but also all the meat and bones that were on the way. A high speed impact creates some kind of explosion in a medium.
A good example are meteorites, the speed is so high that they explode on impact with more power that if they were made of explosives. The kinetic energy can be superior to the equivalent chemical energy.
So that canon ball creates some kind of explosion in the body with a pressure wave and will create a huge hole in the back.
4:38 There was more then 4 types of cannon munitions used in that time period. You had round ball or solid shot, canister shot, grape shot, shrapnel shot, quicklime shot, case shot, chain/split shot, explosive shot, carcass shot and that's just off the top of my head.
The mind is an incredible thing; the entire time i watch this video, the galloping, distorted strains of “the Trooper” play in my head. A fitting soundtrack
The dude forgot that in real life friendly fire is always ON! Even if the British didn't have 12 pdr(they actually did) the French did and a stray French cannonball has the ability to kill Frenchmen, British, Dutch and Prussians. Afterall, to cannon all men are equal.
at the battle, we had captured cannon and Dutch and Prussian cannon and also maybe other nations, i dont know the poundage of those ,but many probably do.
not an expert but wouldn't the heart rupture even without a direct hit, just by being in the proximity of the entry
Oh yeah. No one is surviving that. Assuming his heart and lungs were left in fact, he would have bled to death in seconds. The massive loss of blood pressure would be instant kill.
did you mean to have the thumbnail say "real of fake?" or were you going for "real or fake?""
Corrected, thanks.
Mr Videcette Sounds like a man who has never shot a firearm in his entire life, of course the rear hole is larger and why does he assume it caused by bullets fragmenting. Also musket balls don't usually fragment, they are solid lead and usually moving slowly compared to modern rounds, they squish and deform in most cases.
A small correction on your presentation the difference between horse artillery and foot artillery is that the gunners were mounted for horse artillery while the gunners for foot artillery walked beside the guns. Both horse artillery and foot artillery used horses to move the artillery pieces.
There is absolutely no way someone struck like that survives more than a few milliseconds. They'll not only have lost a lung, but most of the heart and a good chunk of the spine as well due to cavitation.
Dude, the guy was deader than dead before he hit the ground, it's a chest wound, vital organs. No questions asked.
I am a lifelong Napoleonic era buff.
The ball would have pushed through any bones that got in its path out the back.
Foot artillery meant only that the gunners were on foot and walked, not that the guns were pushed by hand. The guns and limbers were always drawn by horses in this period. In the horse artillery, the gunners were also mounted so the entire battery could move about at cavalry speeds or nearly so.
On the article claim, I think it is entirely possible for the exit to be larger than the entrance. This happens even if you shoot a bucket of water with a rifle, as the hydrostatic shock of the impact is transmitted to the back of the target as a shock-wave that will travel ahead of the projectile (once it slows to subsonic in the medium). It is perfectly normal to see a wide seam blown out of a large container behind a small entry hole. The "projectile" causing that is just incompressible water.
On the marriage of the named soldier, surely the most likely explanation is that the identification of the wearer is mistaken, not that he supposedly survived or anything of that sort.
Overall the investigator's claims are not proven; at most others before him uncovered a mis-ID of the soldier, while the investigator himself has not provided much of anything.
Ive seen it in person at the napoleon museum in Paris. Its one of the coolest things there. But I could see it being fake.
Even if the cannonball doesn't fragment into shrapnel itself, it is still creating shrapnel from the cuirass and bone that it's smashing through. I'm sure there's a term for when body parts become shrapnel, but I can't find it; I'm sure it was mentioned in a Lindybeige interview video.
Hey Metatron someone just made a video about the newest assassins creed and how he was given permision to play it earlier, he mentioned the lack of torches in the game and said he even asked to the developers specifically the gameplay director about why they were removed he responded with "Because everything in Japan is made of light wood and paper, if we gave players torches and the ability to burn things down they would just burn down every CASTLE the second they arrive and that wouldn't make for a very fun game", I immidiately remember your video "amazing facts about medieval castles you didn't know", it's baffling how little reaseach these people did to not know about shikkui plaster, if you're interested the video is called "I played Assassins creeed shadows..." and the youtuber is Luke Stephens, the quote is on minute 57 second 36.
Think you would enjoy the latest History Hit video, where a classicist critiques the movie Pompeii. She seemed to be someone you would enjoy, maybe a palette cleanser after the last HH video you watched!
It must have been hurtful to get hit by cannonball
There was a Confederate General from Somerset County, Maryland by the name of John Winder who was hated so much by his command that the troops were planning to "Frag" ( kill him during battle) him, however fate stepped in and took care of Gen. Winder when a solid shot cannon ball from the enemy removed his head. Even the commanding general actually put in his after battle report that his command celebrated at his demise. Strangely, there is two other famous/infamous Generals from Somerset County, Md. who also served the Confederacy. Gen. Arnold (Jones) Elzey of the 1st. Battalion of Maryland Infantry that became the 2nd. Battalion of Maryland Infantry. The other was Gen. Henry Winder who was in fact the overall commander of all prisoner of war camps east of the Mississippi. He contracted a deadly illness while inspecting a Salisbury, NC. He was the person who was to be hanged for the tragedies at Andersonville POW Camp in Georgia. Wertz became the replacement scapegoat and was hung instead.
Unfortunately, seen worse wounds where people survived way too long, if for only moments. Most incapacitations are psychological. The heart can be completely destroyed and the subject will still have 10 - 20 seconds of conscious fight in them. The only physically effective immediate incapacitation, is a critical shock to the central nervous system, ie brain/brainstem. Even then, a subject may 'live' for a significant time after conscious action has ceased. A more accurate statement would be that anyone wearing that armor would've incurred an unsurvivable wound.
"excelent shot"
in regard of ollast words this is a "wow"
Getting decapitated by a cannonbal was not uncommon from what i have read
Getting hit by a cannonball is now a new fear of mine.
the cannonball fairy has been notified.
Having used round ball muzzleloader to hunt deer, one time I discovered that the round lead ball punched the shoulder blade with a perfect round hole the same size of the ball. But the exit wound was many times larger due to the bone fragments and expansion of the lead ball. Even an iron ball will cause a larger exit due to bone fragments and the displaces muscle tissue.
Heavy and slow (if the cannonball has spent a great amount of its velocity) projectiles have the tendency of making the most grievous punctures on resistive materials. If you try to drive your finger through tinfoil the puncture would be of irregular shape and with a really "forceful" look altogether.
Also the English did have 12 pdr guns -with quite a large variety, to say the least- through the Napoleonic wars with the best variety, the 12 pdr of 18cwt, being used until the decade of 1880s.
this can best be seen on naval battles. a fast ball will make a nice clean hole right thru the wall but a ball that is slow will deposit all of its kinetic energy into that wall and the splinter shotgun effect on the other side was a leading cause of death in battle.
@@rhetorical1488 exactly !Good point !
When I first visited the Bayeux Tapestry in the city of Bayeux in 1994, the museum audio guide said the tapestry was made by William the Conqueror's wife assisted by her household ladies. They sewed the tapestry by their own hands as a labor of love to celebrate the Queen's husband's victory. I revisited the tapestry and the museum last year in 2024 and now the story has been changed to William actually paying a monastery to sew the tapestry as a propaganda piece. Museums getting things wrong happens all the time.
Historical wars is notoriously when it comes to mixing up records. It might have been someone with a simular name in the unit that died. When it comes to the damage. I would be supriced. if anyone could find a entrence and exit hole from a canon that are the same size.
at first I was like "what actual difference does it make whether the man died the second he hit the ground or hours later? the man still died.", but then I remembered whose content I am watching. do carry on...
Haha, I thought you were name dropping when you said ricochet. I was like, "who the heck is this dangerous guy, Enricho Chez." 😂😂😂
Interestingly the most common cause of battlefield wounds in this time was fragments of bone becoming airborne shrapnel from those struck by cannon fire. So you can imagine being in closely packed formations the effect this has.
I'm confused. This is a cuirass, but its wearer is repeatedly referred to in a way that seems to be a reference to a rifleman of some sort. What am I missing?
The effectiveness of the napoleonic cuirass shines on cavalry combat where the firearms are of lower power and melee combat are common, but when charging an infantry line or artillery postions they're just as effective as most heavy cavalry which are unarmored.
Let's ask Kentucky Ballistics about the type of damage a cannon can do.
There is a selection of gruesome exhibits from Waterloo in the Surgeon's Hall Museum in Edinburgh, Scotland. A skull scored with sabre cuts and a femur with a musket ball still embedded for instance. There are also some watercolours of soldiers being treated for wounds including one who had a musket ball enter his upper forehead and become embedded under his scalp!
Are we just going to skip over that Bad Ass moment, General Montburn.
Teeth were collected from the dead and used to make dentures and was known at the time as having a Waterloo smile .
The breastplate at the front is supported(of sorts) by the chest and while that obviously isn't enough to prevent penetration it might be enough to keep the hole kinda round. The back does not have that support which might lead to more stretching and tearing of the metal as the ball goes through leading to a larger hole with a more erratic appearance and any pre-existing flaw in the metal or just a slight thinning of the back plate might exaggerate that even further. and lets not forget it's not just the ball coming out it's bits of metal and bone and lots of meat and liquid.
As for the hole being too large at the front, this could also be because the metal got stretched and torn just outside the ball's diameter creating a slightly larger hole as opposed to the ball cutting through like a cookie cutter.
If you've got access to a .22 rifle, next time you have some ham in the fridge that's past its use by date, and a saved chicken wishbone, find yourself a 40mm sprung steel bulldog clip, like many a riffle range use to secure targets. Pack with ham and bones, and send it down range. Ham and bones exit by all holes, not just the oversized one you can punch at the back.
What could be fake here is the details to the story,
Now the hole could be made against an empty breastplate for fun, say they went out of use. But the much larger rear hole indicates to me it was an body inside it. Unlike lead musket balls an massive iron ball would not deform hitting an millimeter thick steel plate so it empty the rear hole should look more than the front.